Migration Guide

This document is meant to guide Girder plugin developers in transitioning between major versions of Girder. Major version bumps contain breaking changes to the Girder core library, which are enumerated in this guide along with instructions on how to update your plugin code to work in the newer version.

Existing installations may be upgraded by running pip install -U girder and re-running girder-install web. You may need to remove node_modules directory from the installed girder package if you encounter problems while re-running girder-install web. Note that the prerequisites may have changed in the latest version: make sure to review System Prerequisites prior to the upgrade.

1.x → 2.x

Server changes

  • The deprecated event 'assetstore.adapter.get' has been removed. Plugins using this event to register their own assetstore implementations should instead just call the girder.utility.assetstore_utilities.setAssetstoreAdapter method at load time.

  • The 'model.upload.assetstore' event no longer supports passing back the target assetstore by adding it to the event.info dictionary. Instead, handlers of this event should use event.addResponse with the target assetstore as the response.

  • The unused user parameter of the updateSize methods in the collection, user, item, and folder models has been removed.

  • The unused user parameter of the isOrphan methods in the file, item, and folder models has been removed.

  • Several core models supported an older, nonstandard kwarg format in their filter method. This is no longer supported; the argument representing the document to filter is now always called doc rather than using the model name for the kwarg. If you were using positional args or using the filterModel decorator, this change will not affect your code.

  • Multiple configurable plugin loading paths are no longer supported. Use girder-install plugin <your_plugin_path> to install plugins that are not already in the plugins directory. Pass -s to that command to symlink instead of copying the directory. This also means:

    • The plugins.plugin_directory and plugins.plugin_install_path config file settings are no longer supported, but their presence will not cause problems.
    • The defaultPluginDir, getPluginDirs, getPluginParentDir methods inside girder.utility.plugin_utilities were removed.
    • All of the methods in girder.utility.plugin_utilities no longer accept a curConfig argument since the configuration is no longer read.

  • The girder.utility.sha512_state module has been removed. All of its symbols had been deprecated and replaced by corresponding ones in girder.utility.hash_state.

Web client changes

  • In version 1.x, running npm install would install our npm dependencies, as well as run the web client build process afterwards. That is no longer the case; npm install now only installs the dependencies, and the build is run with npm run build.

    • The old web client build process used to build all available plugins in the plugin directory. Now, running npm run build will only build the core code. You can pass a set of plugins to additionally build by passing them on the command like, e.g. npm run build -- --plugins=x,y,z.
    • The grunt watch command has been deprecated in favor of npm run watch. This also only watches the core code by default, and if you wish to also include other plugins, you should pass them in the same way, e.g. npm run watch -- --plugins=x,y,z.
    • The girder-install web command is now the recommended way to build web client code. It builds all enabled plugins in addition to the core code. The ability to rebuild the web client code for the core and all enabled plugins has been exposed via the REST API and the admin console of the core web client. The recommended process for administrators is to turn on all desired plugins via the switches, click the Rebuild web code button, and once that finishes, click the button to restart the server.

  • Jade → Pug rename: Due to trademark issues, our upstream HTML templating engine was renamed from Jade to Pug. In addition, this rename coincides with a major version bump in the language which comes with notable breaking changes.

    • Template files should now end in .pug instead of .jade. This affects how they are imported as modules in webpack.

    • Jade-syntax interpolation no longer works inside string values of attributes. Use ES2015-style string templating instead. Examples:

      • a(href="#item/#{id}/foo") → a(href=`#item/${id}/foo`)
      • .g-some-element(cid="#{obj.cid}") → .g-some-element(cid=obj.cid)

    • Full list of breaking changes are listed here, though most of the others are relatively obscure.

  • Testing specs no longer need to manually import all of the source JS files under test. We now have better source mapping in our testing infrastructure, so it’s only necessary to import the built target for your plugin, e.g.

    • 1.x:

      girderTest.addCoveredScripts([
    '/static/built/plugins/jobs/templates.js',
    '/plugins/jobs/web_client/js/misc.js',
    '/plugins/jobs/web_client/js/views/JobDetailsWidget.js',
    '/plugins/jobs/web_client/js/views/JobListWidget.js'
]);

    • 2.x:

      girderTest.importPlugin('jobs');

  • Build system overhaul: Girder web client code is now built with Webpack instead of uglify, and we use the Babel loader to enable ES2015 language support. The most important result of this change is that plugins can now build their own targets based on the Girder core library in a modular way, by importing specific components. See the plugin development guide for a comprehensive guide on developing web-client plugins in the new infrastructure.

Python client changes

  • Girder CLI: Subcommands are no longer specified with the -c option. Instead, the subcommand is specified just after all the general flags used for connection and authentication. For example:

    • Before: girder-cli --api-key=abcdefg --api-url=https://mygirder.org/api/v1 -c upload 1234567890abcdef ./foo
    • After: girder-cli --api-key=abcdefg --api-url=https://mygirder.org/api/v1 upload 1234567890abcdef ./foo

  • The blacklist and dryrun kwargs are no longer available in the GirderClient constructor because they only apply to uploading. If you require the use of a blacklist, you should now pass it into the upload method. These options can still be passed on the CLI, though they should now come after the upload subcommand argument.

  • Legacy method names in the GirderClient class API have been changed to keep naming convention consistent.

    • add_folder_upload_callback → addFolderUploadCallback
    • add_item_upload_callback → addItemUploadCallback
    • load_or_create_folder → loadOrCreateFolder
    • load_or_create_item → loadOrCreateItem

  • All kwargs to GirderClient methods have been changed from snake_case to camelCase for consistency.

  • Listing methods in the GirderClient class (e.g. listItem) have been altered to be generators rather than return lists. By default, they will now iterate until exhaustion, and callers won’t have to pass limit and offset parameters unless they want a specific slice of the results. As long as you are just iterating over results, this will not break your existing code, but if you were using other operations only available on lists, this could break. The recommended course of action is to modify your logic so that you only require iteration over the results, though it is possible to simply wrap the return value in a list() constructor. Use caution if you use the list() method, as it will load the entire result set into memory.

Built-in plugin changes

  • Jobs: The deprecated jobs.filter event was removed. Use the standard exposeFields and hideFields methods on the job model instead.
  • OAuth: For legacy backward compatibility, the Google provider was previously enabled by default. This is no longer the case.